He's Here!

Cole Keith Arthur made his way into the world on May 19th, 2009 at 3:46 am. He weighed in at 6 lbs. 11 oz. and measured 19 inches long.

The details:

Cole was 5 days late so I was wonderng if he would ever come. Last Monday right after I finished typing my last post about graduation, I decided to go outside and get the mail. It was about 5:00 pm. As I was walking my water broke. At least that's what I thought. So I called the doctor and he asked if I was sure my water had broken. I said I wasn't sure but I didn't know what else it could be. He said he was going to be in the office until 6:00 pm so I could come over and he would see what was going on. The doctor took a sample of the fluid and told me it tested negative for amniotic fluid. That didn't make any sense to me, but since I wasn't having contractions he sent us home. He said if I kept leaking fluid over night I should come to hospital first thing in the morning and he would start me. Or if I started having contractions I should call him. And if neither happened, I had a doctors appointment the next afternoon and we would talk about inducing labor. So we went home, very dissapointed.

Dave's parents took us out to dinner at Bertucci's (one of my favorite places). Our branch president had told us last week that if you eat pizza labor will start. So I decided I'd better order pizza. Then we rented a movie and went home. During the movie I started leaking a lot of fluid and then one time when I stood up, a huge gush of fluid came out. There was no mistaking that my water had definitely broken now. I called the doctor and he asked if I was having any contractions. I told him no (although looking back I probably was and just didn't recognize them as contractions). He told me to just come in in the morning like we had talked about. Again, that didn't make any sense to me. Here I am with fluid gushing out of me and I'm supposed to wait another 8 hours? I was kind of upset so Dave told me to lie down. As soon as I did, I started to notice I was having pain, so I started timing. Sure enough, I was having regular contractions 4 minutes apart. After about 20 minutes they started coming every 3 minutes. After an hour I made Dave call the doctor. This time the doctor asked how painful the contractions were (did they take my breath away) and how long did they last (they should be about 60 seconds each). Well, they hurt, a lot. But did they take my breath away? No. And none of them lasted 60 seconds, more like 30 seconds. The doctor said that since we live close to the hospital that I should try and stay home as long as possible. So I suffered through another hour of contractions coming every 2-3 minutes. Finally Dave convinced me that we should go to the hospital. By time we got there, around 1:30 am, I was in so much pain I could barely talk.

My labor and delivery nurse, Nicole, was awesome. Even though I was miserable, she talked me through everything, did everything for me, constantly encouraged me, and sped through the paperwork and started my IV asap so I could get my epidural right away. She told me that even if I was dilated to a 10 she would make sure I got my epidural if that's what I wanted. The first time they checked me I was dilated to a 6 or 7. Every time I would have a contraction, I would start singing "Roxanne" in my head. I guess it must have been on the radio in the car ride to the hospital. I kept thinking, why in the world is this song in my head?

Finally the anesthesiologist got there and gave me the epidural. As soon as I laid down I felt a lot of pressure and I told the nurse. She checked me and said she thought I was fully dialted but wanted the doctor to double check. Sure enough, I was dilated to a 10! They told me it was time to have this baby and a bunch of nurses came in and started getting things ready. Within minutes I was pushing. The doctor was using forceps and was pulling the baby out as I was pushing. I'm not exactly sure why, because he never told us, but for some reason he wanted to get the baby out quick. So literally after only a few minutes of pushing, our little Cole was born. He's such a miracle and I can't imagine life without him.

Getting ready to go home